Last night we held a meeting with the village to let them know when we would be starting the teaching and what that would look like. We plan to start teaching on Monday, July 6th and go five days per week until we get done, probably sometime in October. It is exciting to finally have a date set and the villagers were expressing their commitment to come to the teaching. Do be praying that they will come faithfully. We were pleased with their excitement.
At the end of the meeting, a young man, who has helped me some with translation and was visiting from another village, encouraged the others by saying, "Don't leave off this talk they are going to tell you. 30 years ago [another group] started sending evangelists into the Nagi speaking language areas, and to this day there is not a single person who knows and understands this talk. Even now the priest in the village where I live is trying to get some of us to understand and be involved (in leading meetings), but still there is not one. But now these guys who have come are about to tell you that talk in Nagi, from the beginning, so you will understand it. And who knows, maybe then some of you can come down and tell us so we can know too. So don't leave off this talk!"

PREPARATIONS

The boys helping Porter prepare a visual aide for the lessons

Preparations for teaching are in high gear. Our goal before starting was to have at least 55 of the 70 phase 1 lessons ready. The total ready is currently at 44. All of the Scripture portions needed for phase 1 are drafted, and we are working through the checks needed to have them ready for teaching. There is a lot left to be done before we reach our goal, so please be praying for good health for our team, not just the adults, but our children as well. During the teaching we will continue to develop the rest of the phase 1 lessons as well as 10-15 additional lessons for 'extending the storyline', a brief synopsis of the church in Acts, persecution of the disciples, and the promised return of the King.

We have also recently printed the chronological pictures onto banner material, as well as a number of maps and charts. In addition to this we are asking the villagers to make up 60 strings of 100 beads (found locally) that we can use to represent a timeline of biblical history.